All Roads
by hidekey
Summary: From the figure of speech, all Roads lead to Rome, there are some futures that will play out essentially the same even when major characters walk a different road than Canon.
1. Prologue

The dragon paced his pen as best it could, shackled by foot and wing. This was to be its second release since captivity, its first official raid. Drannen spread before the audience, the Ishvalan city glistening in the hot sunlight.

Yuri Rockbell stood in the crowd, trying to blend in with the civilian politicians. The military's newest weapon, a human-dragon chimera, was unveiled last week and this demonstration would see the government's position against human transmutation bent to allow the military to experiment with criminals condemned to death.

Alchemists entered the pen, agitating the beast- Person! It was still half human, he had to remember that! Though it looked entirely dragon, it -he- had a human mind and a human soul. From a detached perspective, Yuri could see their strategy in presenting a dragon as their demonstration piece: they were rare creatures due to their violent nature against even their own species, every inch of them designed for death. The story book pictures were nothing compared to the real thing- the shock of the abomination before them made everyone forget there was a man trapped inside it. From his personal perspective, it was absolutely horrifying!

"Amestria and her neighbors have brought dragons near extinction out of necessity," the representative explained. "You will note their razor sharp scales, claws, and horns - every sharp edge covered in a thin film of oily venom that can kill a man in hours if it gets in the blood. Although young, this dragon can already spray toxic acid from its mouth though it takes a month to refill the venom sac. When fully grown in about ten years, it will double it's volume and refill within a day. These natural defenses, combined with their contrary nature and low intellect, have prevented training dragons for combat purposes in the past. With the mind of a condemned criminal, given a chance at a new life and under a vigorous re-education and training regimen, we expect to harness the power of this once-scourge of mankind for the benefit of Amestris and her people." That particular condemned criminal inside the dragon abomination was why the fugitive doctor risked exposure.

With a flourish of alchemy, the handlers released the beast -man!- from its bindings. When it didn't immediately move to obey the attack command, the collar on its neck began sparking with electricity. This was no mere shock collar, the electricity visibly arced over its whole body as it collapsed. Once it recovered the command was repeated, and the dragon took to the air.

In just a few minutes, all that was left of Drannen was flames and the screams of the dying where once stood the defensive city that stymied Amestris' forward progress for months. The dragon returned to its pen docile, likely not wanting another dose of electricity, and allowed it's jailers to re-chain it. This time with extra chains anchoring it to the ground, and a muzzle so the dignitaries could take a closer look.

The crowd rushed forward to look at the beast, and Yuri got as close as he could without being noticed.  
"Doctor Rockbell, what a surprise to see you here. You're hoping to visit your conspirator, are you?" Colonel Grande asked. Soldiers grabbed him by the arms. "Let me facilitate your reunion."


	2. 1

He'd followed orders, and now he was secured and forgotten. Dark as it was, he felt around the newest of his countless prison cells. A bed he couldn't use, a sink that was too small to hold any decent amount of water, and a toilet equally as useless. Even so this building was much nicer than some of the places he'd stayed since his court marshall: here he could give in to his body's desire to move, even if it was only by shuffling about in a circle. But with his chains and shackles, shuffling was noisy; he was caught off guard when the cell door opened behind him. His eyes cried in protest to the sudden deluge of light.

"Visitor for you, Mustang." That name - his name - was the sweetest sound he'd heard in a long time. His keepers had spent months convincing him he didn't have a name, that his life before captivity was unimportant. He was ashamed that he'd forgotten how to pronounce it. His lips moved beneath the muzzle, silently repeating it, but stopped mid-name once his eyes focused and he saw his 'visitor'.  
He stepped backwards in horror, realizing his sacrifice was in vain, and his bare foot landed on the grooves of the array he'd carved earlier. With a will he couldn't conjure up before, he activated it and lashed his tail against the back wall. Rebound hit him hard, and he sunk into unconsciousness.


	3. 2

_His hands were shaking so badly he was sure he'd miss! GOD! What was he doing here? He joined the army to help the people, why was he obeying an order that would harm everyone but the corrupt Colonel Grande?_

 _With a deep, steadying breath he adjusted his aim to Yuri Rockbell's chest. He'd come to a decision. Colonel Grande was standing to his left, but with a subtle activation of the array on Major Roy Mustang's right glove the Colonel collapsed._

 _The feared and hated Flame Alchemist advanced toward the Rockbell couple with determined purpose. As one, both doctors stepped back in panic just before the Major turned abruptly around and shot his superior in each leg._

 _"I just can't follow those orders!" He wailed to an unfair world. "You," he pointed to Sarah with the barrel of his handgun. And pointed it away when she barely held back a scream._  
 _"Sorry," he apologized shyly. These doctors had saved him from despair many times, just by letting him help in their clinic - reminding him he was human._

 _Colonel Grande didn't like one of his prized state alchemists hesitating in battle, with thoughts of being more than just a killing machine, and had firmly called a stop to it once Zolf Kimblee the Crimson Lotus Alchemist got curious and started tagging along._

 _That was why he was singled out for this assignment. Yes, other soldiers helped out the doctors from time to time, but lately he'd made a habit of coming to the clinic after every patrol. He stayed away from the burn victims, he wasn't that brave yet, but just helping others walk to the privy or changing bed sheets made him feel less of a monster._

 _"Open all your oxygen containers," he told Sara, who fled to the nearby tanks. "And Dr Rockbell, sir, I need you to shoot me in the legs once I'm back in position."_  
 _"What-? No! " Yuri pushed the offered gun away._  
 _"It has to look like an attack!" Roy insisted. "Surely you both understand what was supposed to happen tonight."_  
 _"I'm a doctor, these hands are for healing!"_  
 _"I can't shoot myself, it won't look believable. It should look like a struggle: you pried the gun from my hands, and shot me when I backed up to use fire alchemy."_  
 _"Just come with us" Sara begged. Roy shook his head._  
 _"They'd catch up too fast. I can't-" He fought down a panic attack._  
 _"I'm too useful in this war. If I leave they will track me down and find you as well. They'd be able to execute you publicly for kidnapping a state alchemist, and I'd be forced back into service."_  
 _"Major Mustang, they cannot make you obey, it is your choice and yours alone."_  
 _"What I already do is terrible, Doctor, but the reason I continue is because the alternative is worse. Please just allow me this single act of mercy."_


	4. 3

Yuri's heart flipped inside his chest when he met eyes with the young Major that once stammered his request to help out in the clinic. This creature held the same mannerisms, but the young overburdened state alchemist had never looked so broken. He stared into its eyes, seeing nothing but hopelessness. Until they held recognition, then it was sorrow and despair - and a touch of madness.

It let out a very human horrified gasp, and stepped backwards. The light of a transmutation sparked on the back wall, and Colonel Grande activated his own transmutation. Chaos ensued, and yuri quickly lost track of what was happening. When the dust settled, he was surrounded by ishvalans in a defensive formation against an unconscious dragon. None of the amestrian soldiers were in evidence, and the building was barely more than a pile of rubble.

"Please, don't hurt him" he begged, hoping at least one ishvalan spoke amestrian.

He was strapped to some sort of sling. It rocked gently as he returned to consciousness. Voices held a low conversation nearby, though he couldn't make out the words.

It would have been comforting if he hadn't experienced countless agonies while strapped down like this before. With barely a struggle, the straps broke. He leapt from the sling, cursing the bright sun blinding him. There were a group of people standing ready to fight, their silhouettes merging and making it hard to tell how many.

In a panic, his body reacted by lifting it's curved scales and secreting venom onto the length of the razor sharp edges, the venom sac in his mouth tightened to ready a spray of acidic substance that was toxic to humans.

"Major, no!" A familiar voice shouted. He stood in indecision, poison dripping from the tips of his scales and acid drooling from his mouth and etching the muzzle that kept him from spraying his adversaries. He wasn't a major anymore, his trainers were adamant in pointing out to him that a chimera couldn't hold a rank. He was "chimera 5572" and had been that for what felt like forever.

"Roy Mustang," the name sent him swooning. Twice! That was twice now that he'd heard the name that once was his. It felt like the fear of punishment. But it also felt like freedom. More importantly, it was something that his keepers would never say. Dare he hope to escape them? Or was this the next step in manipulating him? It was cruel, to take away his identity and then flaunt it once he was so worn down that he accepted its loss.

"Major, it's Yuri Rockbell. Don't you remember me?"

I must have said something wrong, Yuri realized. The dragon struggled to roar in its muzzle, clamped so tight around its jaws that the sound came out muffled in its throat. It was a disturbing combination of fear, rage, and despair.

"You say: we take dragon away from Amestris, it not attack." His companion demanded in broken Amestrian.

"He's just afraid, he doesn't know what we're doing." His heart flipped inside his chest, despite the conviction in his voice.

The dragon stood paralyzed for a moment, then closed it's eyes and slowly sunk to the sand, shivering and letting out a piteous whine. Yuri ventured closer, walking to the eye that faced away from the setting sun.

"Roy." The eye opened, its slitted red iris at odds with the midnight blue lens that must have been a throwback from roy's human coloring.

"You're free. We rescued you." The dragon's eye flicked towards the silhouetted militia, narrowed in suspicion.

"Tell them to move away from the sun," he told his interpreter. The words were repeated in Ishvalan.

The dragon's eye widened in realization, then the whole body began wriggling away from the ishvalans.

"Roy, be still!" Yuri cried out. He was rewarded for his efforts with a dragon head nearly knocking him off his feet. The dragon had closed his eyes and was shaking its head like a petulant child. All the while still wriggling backward.

"The horses are behind you and you're dripping with poison and acid." It was a white lie, but it stopped the backwards motion. Immediately Roy began clawing at its muzzle, urgently grunting.

"I doubt they're willing to take it off, considering what you just did to their city."

The dragon glanced at the scorched buildings, and at the militia covered in fresh burn scars. Its breath came faster, launching into a panic attack worse than when it had woke. Though it didn't move any further backward it huddled inward, making sounds very much like a human crying. Yuri gently touched a gloved hand to its brow, the only part of its body not likely to slice through the thick leather, to offer comfort.


	5. 4

An entourage of Ishvalans made way for the translator. "Head priest is decided. Alchemist is punished by Ishvalla, alchemist live as abomination is our revenge. Not here. We pay amestris doctors to keep alive and hide alchemist from soldiers."

Winry led her goat up the path to the foot hills, still unsure why she had this new weekly chore. Her parents told her it was for the man who saved their life, now living as a hermit. He was a "few-jet-if," just like her parents, so he couldn't buy it for himself. Mom and dad couldn't walk out in the open, or the military dogs would take them away forever Ok, she understood that. That didn't mean granny couldn't take it. Goats were smelly! Thank goodness she didn't have to go all the way to the hermit's house, just to the stake on the other side of the hill so the hermit wouldn't be seen when he came to pick it up later. He must really like goats, she mused while tying the creature down, it was never Cow or pig, and she didn't even bring vegetables - well, she'd brought her dinner vegetables once, to keep it off of her plate, and the scolding had been worth it. That next week, however, the Goat was gone and the vegetables rotting where she lay them. She couldn't blame the man, nobody in their right mind liked eating green beans! Chore done, she sprinted away from the smell and made her way home without a backward glance. If she had, she might have seen her best friend Ed sneaking toward the goat.

Ed had watched Winry wander away from her house with a goat every Sunday since her parents came home from the war. The whole town was hiding them from the military, and for a while just being in on the big secret and coming up with ways of warning the town of strangers and finding clever hiding places for them took up much of his time.

Now that the planning was done and there were no strangers yet, he was curious about this hermit, a secret Winry revealed by accident - a secret only the Rockbells knew! And Winry didn't even know who the hermit was!

Well. He'd find out himself, and then he could keep it secret from Winry. He settled down next to the goat and waited for the hermit. It was a really long wait for a young boy, and soon he was fast asleep under the morning sun.

Roy ambled out of his cave, trying and failing to stop the chains holding his wings closed from clanking. The shackles on his ankles weren't so bad since Pinako Rockbell had cut the chains linking them together, but the wing chains were made of a very strong unidentifiable metal. He was told, he couldn't actually see them himself since they were on the back of his wings, that each chain was shaped in a different alchemical array, with anchor pieces encircling each of the wing bones - piercing through the membrane on each side. If they couldn't cut the chains off, there was no chance of slipping out of them other than cutting his wings off entirely.

Resigned to the clatter that scared off any game he might catch -not that he was sure he could hunt well even if he were silent and invisible- he walked onward to his weekly ration.

It was kind of the Rockbells to provide him with food while he worked out a way to feed himself. They were already doing so much to protect him, he felt guilty taking away so much of their money just to feed him. Livestock were expensive, especially when he needed them delivered alive. He'd tried scavenging, and even tried packaged meats from the butcher, both raw and cooked. It seemed that unless he killed it himself, the dragon gag-reflex would leave him starving while surrounded by food.

Ah, there it was now. Grazing peacefully at the end of its tether. Not wanting it to suffer, he made the last dash to the creature as fast as he could. With a bite that encircled the neck, he used his powerful neck muscles to break it's neck before clamping his teeth together.

He was still clumsy with his kill, blood had splashed everywhere and still poured from the ragged neck right onto the boy's shirt.

Not daring to move a muscle, lest he accidentally cut him, roy's wide eyes roved up and down the length of what could spell his doom. Nobody was supposed to see him here!

The boy, equally paralyzed, opened his mouth to scream.

Ed woke up drenched, lying face first on the dirt in some sort of cave. There was stomping feet nearby, and the sounds of brush being dragged. Among them, there were the sounds of whispered profanities. He stayed still and listened, committing many new words to memory. The sound of claws scratching something in the stone reminded him of the monster he'd seen in the meadow. He jerked his head up, startling the monster.

He got a good look at the thing as it fled behind a nearby rock. It sure looked a lot less frightening like that. It was funny to watch, kind of like when Al played hide and seek and didn't realize his bum was sticking out from under the couch. The spiny creature hid is face but the boulder was shorter than his body, and the tail was laid straight out behind him without even the pretense of hiding.

"Are you a monster,? " he asked with the hurtful innocence of a child.

"...yes" it whispered in a tone he recognized from adults as the end of conversation.

"Why am I wet? Why are we in the abandoned mine? Mum says it isn't safe."

"You fell in the lake when you ran from me, this is the closest shelter from the wind. I was starting a fire so you could dry off"

He looked where the creature had been, a pile of deadwood set up for a fire. There on the ground he saw scratching in the stone.

"Hey," he cried in excitement, "is that alchemy?!" The monster peeked shyly from behind his rock.

"Yes..." he answered in shock. "How did you know?"

"Me and my brother are alchemists. You got... let's see... a seal of sollmin?"

"Not quite," Roy chuckled, "the seal of solomon uses the combination of fire and water, but more overlapped." He drew an example of the well known seal in the dirt nearby. "my inverted triangles use the same concept, fire and water creating earth and air, as a stabilizer. The fire in the center is the focus of this array." Ed was bouncing on his knees in excitement.

"Fire alchemy? Like a real actual fire alchemy array? You can control it? It's supposed to be really hard to control."

"Yes, yes, not as well as I should," Roy paused in his answers long enough to light the fire. "It is very advanced and it WILL burn you if you try it."

Though it was the most basic fire transmutation he knew, it taxed him far more than it should. Ed howled in delight. When he noticed how exhausted the dragon got, though, he took a closer look.

"Hey, those chains on your wings are draining the energy from your transmutation!"

"What?!" Roy was shocked. He knew something was interfering with his alchemy but to hear it from a child as though it was obvious... well he felt stupid for not figuring it out on his own.

"I guess it's hard for you to see back there. Sorta like when mom tells me the tag on my shirt is sticking up... I just gotta let her fix it cause I can't see." Ed settled close to the fire and let the heat dry him. Roy was uncertain at first if he should leave the boy alone and hope any mention of dragons was chalked up to a child's imagination, but dragons were cold blooded creatures and the heat from the fire was too much to resist. If someone did take it seriously, and the child related his story of a dragon working fire alchemy... the thought chilled him, and he drew closer to the fire.

"What's your name?"

"5572" he answered by rote.

"That's not a name! Whats your real nam?" The boy demanded.

"R- rrr- r-o-y" He stuttered. Even now, months away from his trainers, he still expected to be punished for saying it.

"Is nice to meet you Roy. My name's Ed."

"Edward?" Roy ventured.

"No. Ed. My mom calls me Edward when I'm in trouble. All my friends call me Ed..." He screwed his face up in concern. "You ARE my friend, aren't you?"

"Well... I'm not your enemy,"

"Oh, good! You're the first lizard friend I ever had! All the other boys will be so jealous!"

"Please don't tell anyone about me- wait! lizard?!"

"Well if you're not a lizard then what's your breed- I mean your species?"

"I suppose it would be chimera"

"That's not a species, that's a class-if-i-cation! But that's when they combine 2 animals with alchemy so I guess I want to know what your specieses are."

Dragon"

"And the other one?"

"Ed, you have to promise me that you won't tell anyone about me. Not your family. Not your friends, nobody!"

"If I promise, can I come back and learn more about your alchemy?"

Roy chuckled. "Cheeky little brat! come back tomorrow if you want to know my other species - it takes some explaining, as long as you make sure nobody follows you... And make sure nobody else follows Winry."

"Deal, but you tell me now and explain tomorrow. I'll even let you get away with calling me little. Once. And only because you're so freakishly huge that everyone is little to you!" Roy thought it over, but the boy's innocent charm and intellectual conversation had already won him over.

"I'm human." He admitted. Ed's face screwed up in confusion.

"But it's bad to do transmutations with real people! They put you in jail for that, i read it in a book!"

Roy laughed bitterly, "The rules have changed recently. Now, the military is allowed to do it under special circumstances."

"Then you're a fugitive like auntie and uncle Rockbell. That's so Cool! I'll keep you a secret from the military dogs, everyone else can take care of Auntie and Uncle. They're not really dogs you know, they're just people who act like dogs. Oh no, You won't fit in most of my hiding places! I'll find some new ones for you!"

With that, he was gone, and Roy was left to agonize over if he should have trusted his safety to a little boy he just met.


End file.
